Disclaimer Review: Three Oscar Winners Get Lost in Apple TV+’s Muddled, Downbeat Revenge Drama

You might need to shield your eyes from all the gleaming Oscar statuettes earned by the stars and creator of Apple TV+’s new thriller Disclaimer , debuting this Friday. Oscar winners Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline lead a cast assembled by acclaimed filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, who won a pair of Oscars himself for directing Gravity and Roma . With a lofty pedigree like that, Disclaimer should be a sure-fire Emmy contender — but after seeing all seven episodes, I have to say it doesn’t quite live up to that pedigree. It’s a classic revenge tale with some lovely visual touches, but it’s a major bummer as well, with a languorous pace and a bewildering narrative that offers too many perspectives and not enough emotional resonance.

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Blanchett stars as journalist Catherine, who has made a living exposing corruption and ethical lapses among society’s elite. But the tables are turned on her when she receives a novel by an anonymous author that seems to expose some ethical lapses in her own past. Kevin Kline plays Stephen, a rumpled old teacher who sent her that novel and nurses a serious grudge against Catherine, determined to make her pay for her sins. (“She needed to suffer, as I had,” he declares.) What did Catherine really do to him all those years ago? And what punishment does she truly deserve for it?

Disclaimer is based on a novel by Renée Knight — and it feels like that, too, with narration from at least three different narrators (!) that explains more than it needs to. The narrative gets lost in the weeds as a result, trying to balance too many different characters and timelines all on top of each other and piling on puzzling twists to keep us off-balance. In some ways, that’s the point: to get us to question whose version of the story we believe. But in the end, we’re just left confused. Plus, a story that could easily be a two-hour movie has been stretched out to fit seven hour-long episodes, and the additional time spent with the characters doesn’t translate into additional depth. It’s not as complicated as it makes itself out to be, and not as emotionally impactful, either.

Cuarón makes it all look good, though, with vibrant cinematography from his usual collaborator Emmanuel Lubezki (another Oscar winner) along with Bruno Delbonnel. The camera glides through vast spaces with Cuarón’s trademark long tracking shots, lending ordinary rooms an almost surreal quality. The flashbacks to a sun-soaked beach, in particular, recall Cuarón’s Roma , including a harrowing rescue at sea that is so vividly filmed, you can practically taste the saltwater. But this is a relationship drama, not a special-effects extravaganza, and even the cinematic visuals can’t justify the over-extended narrative. (It’s not as if Cuarón can do no wrong: His supernatural NBC drama Believe didn’t really work, either.)

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Blanchett is undoubtedly a fantastic actress, and Disclaimer’ s final episode does give her substantial material to work with. Overall, though, her work here as Catherine is not as nuanced a portrayal of a flawed woman as, say, her Oscar-nominated turn in Tár was. Others just feel flat-out miscast. Kline is one of my favorite actors, but it’s strange to hear him speaking with a British accent here, and his natural warmth as an actor doesn’t fit with the vengeance-minded Stephen. Sacha Baron Cohen is an odd choice to play Catherine’s kindhearted husband Robert — we half-expect him to break out in a Borat voice at any moment — and Squid Game’ s Hoyeon is an awkward fit, too, as Catherine’s assistant.

There are a few genuinely poignant moments scattered through Disclaimer’ s run, but taken as a whole, it’s a rough watch, putting its characters through the wringer and wallowing in overheated melodrama with lots of wailing and crying. The story does start to generate real suspense in the final stretch, and if you make it that far, you’ll want to see how it all turns out. But the finale is marred by a truly heinous act of violence that is just stomach-churning to witness. It’s all so gruelingly downbeat that even though we get the answers we’re looking for in the end, we don’t feel satisfied — we just feel exhausted.

THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Despite its Oscar-winning pedigree, Apple TV+’s Disclaimer is saddled with a punishingly glum tone and a bewildering narrative.

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